Fonts Working Group Charter [PROPOSED]

The mission of the Fonts Working Group,
part of the Fonts Activity, is to develop the EOT
(Embedded OpenType) specification. EOT is a wrapper format for OpenType fonts
that allows the latter to be embedded in Web documents.

End date

30 November 2009

Confidentiality

Public

Initial Chairs

Steve Zilles (Adobe), Simon Daniels (Microsoft)

Initial Team Contacts
(FTE %: 30)

Bert Bos, Chris Lilley

Meeting Schedule

weekly telcons, two
ftf meetings

Scope

The goal of EOT (and of the working group) is to allow OpenType fonts to be
embedded in Web documents, in particular (but not exclusively) in documents
that can refer to fonts via W3C's Web Fonts
technology. Currently, Web Fonts is part of CSS and
SVG.

Embedded in this case means that the font is logically or
physically tied to the document. In EOT, that is achieved with a bi-directional
link between the document and the font resource: The Web Fonts technology
defines how to link (the style sheet for) a document to a font and the EOT
Recommendation will define a mechanism that links an OpenType font to a
document or site for which the font was made. The link from the font resource
back to the document may be omitted, but in that case we say the font is
linked, not embedded.

The basis for the EOT specification is the EOT submission. The working group may make
however changes with good reason (e.g., to improve clarity, implementability,
or internationalization) provided these modifications are taken up by
implementers.

In addition to the features described in the submission, the working group
should address at least the following issues:

How to apply EOT to a group of documents or to one or more whole Web
sites, including to documents that did not exist at the time the EOT
resource was created.

Using EOT for linked fonts. For fonts whose copyright licenses permit it
(“free fonts”), linking is often more efficient and more scalable than
embedding. Linked fonts would still use the subsetting and compression
features of EOT.

The role of user agents in enforcing the license associated with a linked
fonts, including in the case when the user saves the document on its local
system.

The conformance criteria of the parts of OpenType that are exposed in
EOT.

The role of user agents in enforcing the license of linked or embedded
fonts, including when documents are downloaded and viewed off-line.

The need for a human-readable license (or a pointer to one) in the EOT
file.

Handling font families with more than four variants. (OpenType recommends
to use the “Preferred Family” parameter instead of the “Font Family
Name” to avoid this problem. But the EOT submission appears to forbid
more then four variants.)

Extensibility, in particular forward-compatibility with a possible future
version that can embed other types of fonts than OpenType.

Success Criteria

The working group aims to make a W3C Recommendation for EOT, which also
requires developing a test suite. The Recommendation should be implemented
(both renderers and authoring tools) on at least two different platforms.

The group may organize one or more workshops, to gather feedback, to
coordinate implementations, etc. One goal is also to talk to font designers and
graphic designers.

Liaisons

W3C Groups

The SVG and CSS groups are cooperating on the Web Fonts specification. Web Fonts uses a
set of descriptors (in either CSS or XML syntax) that specify
the location (URL) and other metadata of a font sufficiently to allow the
font to be downloaded and applied to a document. It is not specific to
EOT, nor does EOT rely on Web Fonts, but Web Fonts and EOT are meant to
be compatible.

Communication

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face
meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Working Group home page.

The group holds weekly, one-hour teleconferences and two face-to-face
meetings. The group may meet more or less frequently as needed.

Decision policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this
group will seek to make decisions by consensus. When the Chair puts a question
and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair
should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and
move on.

This charter is written in accordance with section 3.4, Votes of the
W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process
Document requires.

Patent policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy
(5 February 2004 version). To promote the widest adoption of Web
standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented,
according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.

About this charter

This charter for the Working Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict
between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the
W3C Process takes precedence.